Interactive
See how Road Town, Tortola has been damaged by Hurricane Irma

9 Sep 2017

31 Mar 2015

Interactive
See how Providenciales, Turks and Caicos, has been damaged by Hurricane Irma

10 Sep 2017

1 Jan 2016

European countries have been boosting relief efforts in their Caribbean territories amid criticism over their response to Hurricane Irma.

French President Emmanuel Macron, who is visiting French islands that took the full force of the storm, said his government had responded with “one of the biggest airlifts since World War Two”.

UK Foreign Minister Boris Johnson is also due to visit the British Virgin Islands and Dutch King Willem-Alexander is touring the Dutch side of St Martin, where at least four people were killed.

“I have seen proper war as well as natural disasters before, but I’ve never seen anything like this,” King Willem-Alexander told Dutch radio on Tuesday.

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Irma killed at least 23 people in the three countries’ overseas territories. The victims include 10 on the French island of St Barts and on the French part of St Martin.

Thousands of people ignored calls to evacuate last week, and clung on in the dangerously exposed islands during the storm.

Teams are still working to clear Highway 1, the road connecting most of the inhabited islands, and bridge inspections are continuing.

The US aircraft carrier Abraham Lincoln has arrived off Florida and other navy ships were in the area on Tuesday to help distribute food to the Keys and evacuate residents.

In Jacksonville, Mayor Lenny Curry said 356 people had to be rescued amid record-high storm surges and flooding, the Florida Times-Union reported.

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Other parts of the state escaped the storm lightly compared to the Caribbean islands.

“The storm surge flooding in Miami is a mere fraction of what would have happened if the core of the storm had been further east,” Rick Knabb, former director of the National Hurricane Center, said in a tweet.

Another hurricane, Jose, has been weakening over the western Atlantic, with swells due to affect parts of Hispaniola (the island split into Haiti and the Dominican Republic), the Bahamas, and the Turks and Caicos Islands, later this week.